Battling cancer with lots of hope

• Little Jeff Mutuku battles Leukemia as his family makes sacrifices just to see him get better

Jeff Mutuku is just five years old and his Christmas wish is a little more sobering than what many kids his age would want, “I want a car, a bicycle, a motorcycle...no, I really want to get healed,” he says.

Having cancer has put a lot of physical, emotional and financial strain unto his family. His father, Felix Maingi has walked through this path with his son for about a year now and recounts with great concern how life has changed for him and his family.

It took several trips in and out of hospital for a year before Felix sensed that something was terribly wrong with his young son.

“He would easily catch a cold, tonsils flu and had a very high fever. This saw his schooling terribly interrupted for the better part of 2007,” says the father of seven. As a result, Jeff never had the chance to complete his pre-school and has come to know the hospital as his second home.

The following year, Felix took his son into consultations with paediatricians at five different hospitals in Nairobi. They were desperately seeking answers to his health problems. Yet with all the knowledge these doctors claimed to have in child health care, Jeff still ailed.

“My son’s health kept on deteriorating, although, on different occasions, the doctors treated him of either malaria or typhoid. Even up-to-date, I have never come to understand this,” says the boy’s father in discontent.

Luckily, a different diagnosis was made in early 2009 at the Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital in Muthaiga. The boy was found to be suffering from leukemia – a malignant progressive blood condition in which the bone marrow and other blood-forming organs produce increased numbers of abnormal white-blood cells.

Felix, who works at a printing press at Roysambu, could not keep up with the high charges at the hospital. So when the doctors at Gertrude later referred them to the Kenyatta National Hospital, he was grateful to get admission.

Unknown to him, this marked the beginning of a long journey – given the time-consuming stages of anti-cancer treatment that has seen him tethered to his son.

“The whole of this year as from February, we have been at the children’s cancer ward. My son has only been home for two weeks since then,” Felix says.

“ I have been missing my brother John, mum, daddy and everyone else,” the little boy, who has been discharged despite a pending bill, says.

Initially, Felix would baby-sit his son at his hospital bed.

“I have this strong attachment to my son and I could not stand seeing him go through this illness alone. Also, the diagnosis came at a time when his mother was very pregnant and I seemed not to have a choice. But with time, I got to realise that anti-cancer treatment needed a lot of patience and to continue maintaining my son in hospital I had to sober up and go back to work,” Felix explains during the interview.

Pushing through

At the hospital, Felix got to interact with parents whose children also suffer from cancer. Slowly, he began to understand that the illness did not spell doom upon his son and that he had to keep pushing through. With this, he delegated baby-sitting at the hospital to one of his eldest daughters and reported back to work.

The thrice-a-week trips that he makes to the hospital cost him about Sh3000, a week and “the cost of treatment is expensive as a dose might cost Sh1800 and Jeff might need about four of these,” he explains.

He adds that after this course of treatment, there might be some more cancerous cells that would indicate the need for more medication.

With a monthly basic salary of Sh12,500 that goes down to a net of Sh2000 – after some soft-loans are deducted, the sole-breadwinner of his family has a lot on his mind.

“I have to make sure that my son has the prescribed medication and the daily fruits that the doctors have recommended. Sometimes, there is no money for fare and I have to walk from my house in Huruma to the hospital. This has been very draining and my only driving force this far, is to see my son back to his feet,” Felix says.

Doctors, he says, have assured him that there is a possibility that his son would get well.

“Given that cancerous cells have not invaded his spinal chord or brain and the fact that he is not yet over 10 years of age; I am assured that his condition can be reversed,” adds the boy’s father.

But even with this kind of hope, he insists, Jeff has to finish his course of treatment. So far, his family’s upkeep and Jeff’s medication has been sponsored by friends, whom he now feels their discontent.

“I have noticed a change of attitude in most of them – it is like they are fed up with me. But I understand them, it is not that easy to give and keep giving all the time,” he says of them.

He is also indebted to most of his friends and other creditors, who he says are losing faith in him. “They do not see how I can get back to my feet and repay their money.”

Still, Felix nurtures his hope to see his son lead a life like other boys of his age. “I am in the process of looking for ways in which this boy can be helped as there is a possibility of him getting cured of cancer,” he adds.

But until then, Felix has outstanding hospital bill of over Sh100,000 to settle at the hospital besides the Sh30,000 he borrowed from friends.

And although some of his children have had to drop out of school, Felix is hopeful that there will be a brighter tomorrow when his family will get back to their happier yesterdays.

He acknowledges that it has been hard for his family to cope with the boy’s illness.

“Sometimes, my younger son asks me so many questions that I do not know how to handle. My elder daughters (who are teenagers) have also gone through a harsh life as I am not able to provide for some of their basic feminine items. They are resilient enough, but at times, we disagree when I try to explain the situation that I am in. If not properly handled, a situation like mine can be a big problem to the family,” Felix explains.

The strain in his family is very loud and clear from the look of things inside his one-roomed corrugated iron-sheet house in Huruma slums. The cooking pots are tucked away and a 10-litre jerrican of porridge is placed right under thee table – which is kitchen.

And as the interview goes on, Jeff’s two younger siblings are served two cups of porridge to keep away the hunger pangs. Felix who once lived in a two-roomed stone house in Huruma, explains that he had to move house after his son’s illness as his financial situation demanded.

He adds: “It’s a choice that I had to make so as to stretch my coins. Otherwise, I don’t know how else we could have survived in the city, given that there is nothing to look forward to back home in Kitui – since the rains failed.”

As Christmas approaches, the family knows that they can’t afford luxuries but a family reunion is good enough. It is something they’re grateful for.

mmwololo@nation.co.ke